tonight on a second look we revisit a program we first aired back in 1989. ktvu's george watson traces the history of one of california's most intriguing characters. we're talking about william randall and the enormous castle he built. we hope you enjoy the program. he was born before the

battle of gettysburg and he would live well into the atomic age. he founded a publishing empire that was legendary in its inattention to truth and the ability to manipulate the american public. he was married and the father of five sons. he flaunted a public affair with a movie star for 36 years. this giant billboard of a man would influence presidential politics for the first half of this century. he was throughout his life reviled and honored as he led his country men on a roller coaster ride of emotions. william randolph hurst is the citizen who would be king. william randolph hurst wanted his newspapers to be dramatic. his stories did not have to be real but full of stories he

thought people wanted to read. it was an idea he seized and pushed to the limit. a hurst newspaper was essentially three things. headlines, comics and sports. hurst would single into a story and blast it for days, the headlines would breathlessly blare out the day's latest. if the news wasn't interesting enough on its own merit then a hurst reporter would make it so. for example without knowing yet exactly why a preacher ran off with an 18-year-old ward. a reporter wrote that the man was bitten by a love microbe that seemed to exist only in the long island neighborhood where the preacher lived. the preacher eventually wound

up killing himself. and there's the story of the hurst reporter that sought a picture of a dead girl from the girl's mother. the reporter proceeded to set a fire in the back of the house. when the mother fled, he sneak into the house and stole the dead girl's picture. do we have here an intrepid hurst reporter or a thief? the newspaper gave you this and more. the cut outs of teddy roosevelt charging up san juan hill and sheet music from the popular music of the day. this wasn't just a newspaper, it was a penny a copy home entertainment center. hurst was 23 years old when he took over the san francisco examiner. his father had reluctantly given him a money losing rank that ranked dead last among san francisco's eight daily newspapers. the rank of today had a pretty

good idea what his grandfather was trying to do 102 years ago. >> i think the direction was one like nfl films. making the every day into a heroic, making a fire into a -- making a boxing match into a war of the century. perhaps that's an inevitable part of journalism to take a story that's on its face not interesting to everybody and finding the story within the story. given that, william randolph hurst began a war. like him or not the country was dealing with a giant of a man. not to mention a giant of a man who had an opinion on everything. >> make sure that you yourself nominate the candidate for whom you are to vote. but one thing slowed him down

in the early days he did not have unrestricted access to the hurst fortune. his father had died, his mother had all the fortune. hurst often badgered her over $500 here, $500. finally she turned over her shares and turned over millions to hurst. the outcome was the birth of yellow journalism. that phrase was derived in a squabble between two papers over who owned the rights of the yellow kid. but yellow journalism really symbolized the tactics pulitzer used to sell newspapers. to win a circulation war how about a real war with spain.

it began with hurst offering a reward for information on the sinking of the uss main in havana harbor. nobody else knew for sure who sunk the maine. but hurst set off to convince the american people that spain was the culprit. he was there with a gang of hurst reporters who went there to report and sometimes create the news. when fredrick remmington on assignment in cuba told hurst he wanted to go home because nothing was going on. hurst gave him that famous line, you supply the pictures, i supply the war. >> television is the median today that newspapers was then. while television has quality news segment it's basically an entertainment based median. i think when there was no tv and there was no radio and you were basically inventing mass

media. entertainment had to be a major component of what was there. i see a lot of what was being done then as creating the idea of mass media. >> reporter: on april 15, 1906 the great quake and fire led waste to the city. hurst home lay in ruins. how would hurst handle this stupendous story. in a frenzy of activity he raised $200,000 in cash for quake relief. he introduced a bill in congress calling for 4-1/2 million dollars to rebuild the city's gutted public buildings. then under the highly publicized reporting of the hurst newspapers he organize nighed relief strains from new york, chicago and los angeles to ship materials to san francisco for the city's

homeless. during all of this, the san francisco examiner never missed a single edition. hurst purchased presses at double the price and set up shop putting out his dailies from oakland. >> follow second look on facebook and twitter. look at you guys with your fancy-schmancy u-verse high speed internet. you know, in my day you couldn't just start streaming six ways to sunday. you'd get knocked off. and sometimes, it took a minute to download a song. that's sixty seconds, for crying out loud. we know how long a minute is! sitting, waiting for an album to download. i still have back problems. you're only 14 and a half. he doesn't have back problems. you kids have got it too good if you ask me. [ male announcer ] now u-verse high speed internet has more speed options, reliability and ways to connect. rethink possible.

when william randolph was a boy, his father used to take him camping, at that time they lived in tents. in 1919 he approached architect julie morgan and asked her to build him a bungalow. a single bungalow. he obviously changed his mind. oakland born, educated at cal berkeley and paris. julie morgan was a gifted architect and pioneer among women in her field. but perhaps her greatest skill was the fact that she could

deal with hurst. mrs.morgan got a preview to the hurst when he commissioned her to build the home of the examiner. the heavy medieval ornateness of the lobby. this is the way hurst liked his buildings. the building turned out to be a dress rehearsal for mrs. morgan. a place he could call home. julie morgan said that if hurst had concentrated on being an architect he could have been a great one but he was in fact, a medler to an intent that defies belief. for example, one day he was driving up the hill to his castle. he didn't like the way one of the guest cottages looked in relation to the main house. he had the cottage torn down and moved. the grand towers we see today

are not the first. he deemed the originals too spare and had them torn down and rebuilt he wanted a better view of the mountain so he added the gothic suite. the neptune is the third built on the spot. the first two discarded because they were too small. he may have been right on both counts but i think you get the picture. on the other hand it's hurst house, it's what he wants and he has the money to pay for it let him do what he wants. money however was the problem. the way he was spending he was compromising the fiscal integrity of his own empire. morgan began the project down at the bay with george hurst built a wharf in the first warehouses in 1958. if senior hurst also built a house that is still used by the hurst corporation today. the house is less of a statement by the one made by his son on top the enchanted hill. the warehouse has stored the works of art and construction materials needed to build and

furnish the castle. a village for the workers was build. it is a marvel that morgan could build this kingdom and still deal with the demands of hurst. both shy and tremendously gifted respected each other. as unfinishes as it is this is the fruit of their communal effort. the suite was intending to do the -- this became the vip suite. in his third floor gothic suite, hurst built himself a modest home. meriam slept on the third floor

but as hurst mistress, she reigned over the home. even within the fairly strict regimen laid out by hurst. how odd it must have been for hurst guests when they would arrive and find histers and not miriam hurst. but when it was right,miriam would be called. but hurst time with histers was only a show. most of his time was spent with miriam. guests were allowed to do as they pleased. they could swim, play tennis or develop by the largest private zoo in the world. they could also go to the library.

or if you were charlie chaplain, you could playfully seduce the mistress of the manor. at night how are guests had to play by hurst rules. 20 minutes before the dinner they would arrive and were allowed one drink before dinner. hurst did not approve of alcohol, but guests found a way to go around this prohibition. promptly at 9:00 there would be dinner in the long table. hurst at the center, mariam across from him and the place of honor set to his right which was always occupied by julie morgan when she was at the

castle. after dinner the guests made another mandatory appearance at the castle theater for the evening's movie which of course changed every night. the chief created a dream like atmosphere for himself and his guests that was as much fairy tale castle as it was personal stement. as heavy, dark and other worldly as this self-built monument was there were those who still found the place delightful on its own merits. >> to me it was grand. and the biggest bone i have to pick with a movie like citizen's king is that it portrays samsimian as a dark gloomy place. i don't perceive it as that. i presume it as light and illuminated. i see it as a creative outburst. >> as pleasant as wonderful as hurst tried to make life on the ranch he never got it the way he wanted to. he ran out of time and money.

hurst made money only so he could spend it. william randolph hurst could not be president of the united states but he could buy whatever he wanted to have until that is the year 1947.

at the age of 74, wr hurst had bulldozed the most prosperous paper in the world. hurst couldn't save himself he was a brilliant newspaper technician but he was a willfully inept administrator. in 1947 he had to give up financial control of the world within a world that he had created. he had to stop buying and building. the unkindness part of all is when he started to start paying off the symbols and realities of his power. if he sold the newspaper in

rochester new york as he did, that meant he could no longer billow out he message to that corner of the country. but the trust committee now charged had the fiscal power to be ruthless. hurst agreed to get rid of three of his collections. his collections of silver, medieval armour reu -- medieval armory and art were said to be the best in the world. but what he said, was not worth what he paid for. >> this whole system of income taxation has degenerated into a

racket. in which the public tries to cheat the government and the government tries to rob the public. >> at a time when the bankers wouldn't lend him any money. davies stepped and gave old wr a million dollars interest free loan it was a true mark of the woman who would share so much of her life with hurst. she was his mistress but also her best friend. she was able to get her hands on $1 million in the depression. far beyond william hurst. the war that hurst opposed would rescue the empire. when the japanese attacked pearl harbor december 7, 1941 the united states was at war and the country was clambering for the news that hurst was willing and able to provide.

after decades of anti japanese propaganda, the world validated japanese pleas. so hurst and davies packed up and left the castle and moved to the safety of wintoon. his 67,000-acre timber ridge estate in northern california. he would spend most of the war years there. but for the aging giant time was finally running out. >> follow second look on facebook and twitter. dñañy

in his 70s, hayes survived and was stronger than ever. but in 1947, at the age of 84, he became too ill to live in the isolated splendor of his castles. he would be forced to leave sansimian for the last time.

28 years after he told junie morgan he wanted a bungalow built on top of the hill he would go to beverly hills to die. near his doctors he would hang on for four more years still unwilling to give up the life he had so extravagantly lived. wealthy beyond imagination he had power, but never the presidency. he had the glitter of hollywood all around him but he never became the king of hollywood. throughout his lifetime he was passionately loved and just as passionately hated. time magazine once wrote of william randolph hurst. quote, no other press ever matched the hurst press for flamboyant and insightment of mass hysteria, end quote. on august 19, the founder of one of the greatest publishing empires in the world died. with the leader gone, jock i

canning for power began at once. the first to fall was marian davis. she was asleep when hurst died in her beverly hills home. the hurst administration arranged to have his body removed. when she awakened she did not know that he was dead. she was reportedly heartbroken that after 36 years it would end like this. but the hurst corporation continued to move swiftly against her. they terminated all hurst employees that had been hired to harvie's urging. the corporation could only have acted in such brutal fashion because of davies. they needn 't of been

concerned. davies never tried to take control of wr's control. the family gave sansimian to the state in 1957. they kept the surrounding 77,000-acre ranch and even the road leading up to the castle but the buildings and grounds were deeded to the state. the hurst estate was such a white elephant the family tried to sell it. not surprisingly there was no takers. they had to do some negotiating to get the state to take it off their hands. it was build to fit the peculiarities. only randolph hurst could call this place home. this could never be home to someone merely rich. only someone larger than life could roam the halls of this museum and say this is where i live. like it or not this place has become the symbol of the man

who grabbed the world by its shirt collar and shook it until it paid full attention to what he had to say. for william randolph hurst world the was a stage and the part that he played was king. but beyond that he was an enigma. was he a politician, a father, a philanthropist, he was all of those things but what seemed to be most important to him was that the world knew who he was. so he built himself a stage for his performance. he built it here on the enchanted hill where william randolph hurst truly made a name for himself.